Explain Serial ATA

[John Mather]

Can somebody explain to me about the Serial ATA HD?

Does it act just like a normal IDE HD? And how do you install it do you just use the floppy driver that came with the mobo?

I bought one by accident and can't flog it on EBAY. my mate has asked me to build him a PC so i might just stick it in there

cheers people

 

[N3051M]

Does it act just like a normal IDE HD?[/qoute]
yes it does, exept its heaps faster (1.4gb/second data transfer.. something like that)

And how do you install it do you just use the floppy driver that came with the mobo?
[/quote/]
take a motherboard that is compatible (or get a pci controller if it doesnt have the connections) and plug in the power and data cables on. Simple. Windows XP should automaticaly detect it but you might need to initialise it/format it for use (if its brand new)
to initialise it you just go to my computer (right click it)> manage>disk management, find the disk that you just installed and initialise.. set how many partitions and done.. otherwise you can use a program called diskwizard from Seagate or something like that and it will do everything for you..

Incase you want to use it with IDE hdds or it doesnt pick up you might need to change a few settings in bios to enable it.. refer to its manual..

sorry to post this back a bit late.. had to wait for teh phone line to clear
N3051M

 

[Nodsu]

No, it's not heaps faster.. The SATA interface speed has nothing to do with the actual HD performance. Yes, SATA drives generally are somewhat faster, but that's only because they are newer, not because of some big numbers are being advertised by the marketing driods.

SATA cabling is a bit different, but no rocket science really.

You need a driver for the SATA controller if you haven't installed one, yes. And yes, you have to use the floppy if you want to install Windows itself on the SATA drive.

From software point of view it is a hard drive just like any other, no difference. Partion, format, use it like any IDE drive.

 

[N3051M]

yeh.. what he said.. (hey.. i was close .. and i only installed one on a system that already had windows on it...)

 

[LipsOfVenom]

whoa, so I have to have a floppy to install windows on a clean SATA drive?? can't we just....install from a CD??

 

[John Mather]

aparrently not. i tried it in my this one before i got an IDE but it just wouldnt find the HD thats why im not using it.

So if i build a PC from scratch and turn it on with only the SATA then i stick in the Floppy driver and then install windows? is it that simple?

 

[IBN]

I have just bought a new Sata II hard drive but i am having problems with intstallation. i've connected it to the sata1 port on the motherboard and the dvdrw to the primary ide port on my motherboard. in bios my dvdrw is shown as the primary master and the sata hdd as the third primary master. i want my sata hdd to be the primary master.

ive tried messing with jumpers but i cant get the sata to be the first primary
master.

i have a asus motherboard.

 

[Nodsu]

Why do you need your hard drive to be the first primary? The primary/secondary/tertiary controllers are equal. They are labelled only because one has to order them somehow - operating systems tend to assume that hard drives are at fixed locations.

If your BIOS likes to enumerate the IDE devices before the SATA ones, then there's nothing you can do about it really..

 

[IBN]

Thanx. ok so it dont matter then. i'm installing windows now on my sata II lets see how it goes......................

 

[IBN]

Ok i've installed windows on my SATA II HDD but it takes suprisingly longer to boot up into windows compared to my old IDE HDD i had.

The motherboard logo screen is displayed for upto 60 or more seconds and then it goes into windows. If i restart in windows then the same problem doesnt happen but still is a bit slower than my IDE HDD in this respect.

 

[LipsOfVenom]

goto run and type msconfig on the boot.ini tab select /noguiboot and in the timeout section change it to seconds..also you can disable some programs that are unnecessary at startup in the startup tab. then restart the computer to see if this helps.

 

[IBN]

thanx for the quick reply but that didnt work. I think it might be my motherboard takes a bit longer to detect it. i tried mesing around in the bios to the best of my knowledge but to no luck. maybe its a problem with my bios drivers???

 

[Nodsu]

In BIOS, set the IDE devices you don't have to "none" instead of "auto" to skip detecting those.

You could also disable the logo screen to see at what point exactly the delay occurs.

 

[IBN]

i've done as the last post did. it didnt work but now a week later the problem seems to have gone completely.
weird???